Police, B.C.’s coroner service and the province are investigating the recent death of a six-week-old infant that had been under the care of a family friend as part of a plan created by the Ministry of Children and Family Development and the baby’s parents, according to the parents’ lawyer.
Now, the family’s lawyer is raising concerns about the circumstances surrounding the child’s death and the reasons he was not under the parents’ care.
Child protection lawyer Roslyn Chambers says the baby boy, Valentino, was born on June 25, and two days later, a safety plan was created by social workers with the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) after a police wellness check at his parents’ home.
It is not clear what triggered the wellness check.
Minister of Children and Family Development Grace Lore said the province receives about 48,000 reports of concern about the safety of a child each year.
According to B.C.’s representative for children and youth, Jennifer Charlesworth, a safety plan is created when a social worker assesses a situation where a child might be at risk for a variety of reasons. She said the plan is typically established in collaboration with the family, and generally allows for the family to maintain a relationship with the child.
“The safety plan is really to try and ensure that the family has the opportunity to inform and influence where they think the child could be safe if they’re not temporarily safe with the biological parents,” Charlesworth told CBC.
Chambers says Surrey RCMP officers went to the home and found what they believed to be drug paraphernalia.
She said the officers found a bag containing a white powdery substance, but Chambers said it was salt that the infant’s father uses in his work as a tattoo artist.
RCMP communicated their observations to MCFD, which then made the safety plan in collaboration with the baby’s parents, Chambers said.
Chambers said the mother, Chyanna Baker, gave social workers three options for safe care of her child: Baker’s mother, who worked outside the home and could not provide care 24 hours a day, seven days a week; a family friend who was unable to care for the child for personal reasons; and another family friend.
Chambers said the third option was determined to be the best, but said it’s unclear whether anyone from MCFD went to the home or did any sort of background check to ensure it was safe.
“We’re not even clear if that friend was checked out. And if that friend wasn’t checked out, it doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Chambers said.
Part of the plan allowed the mother to visit her child at the friend’s home, Chambers said, adding that the mother was “staying overnight most nights.”
Two days before the baby was found unresponsive, the mother caught a cold, and the friend asked her to stay away until she felt well, Chambers said.
On the afternoon of Aug. 5, Chambers said, the mother received a photo of the child that appeared to show bruising on the baby’s ribcage.
Shortly after, Chambers said, the baby was found unresponsive and was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
“The mother wasn’t contacted when the child was found unresponsive,” Chambers said. “The mother wasn’t contacted when the child was taken to the hospital. The mother was contacted after the child was deceased.”
The cause of the baby’s death has not been determined. Chambers said the family has been told it could take two months to get answers.
Multiple agencies investigating
Surrey RCMP confirmed to CBC that its officers attended the home on Aug. 6 to assist B.C. Emergency Health Services after a report that an infant was in medical distress. The baby was taken to hospital by ambulance, RCMP said.
The Surrey RCMP Serious Crime Unit is working with the B.C. Coroners Service and MCFD to determine what happened to the baby.
The coroners service has also confirmed it is investigating.
Lore said her ministry cannot comment on specific cases, citing privacy concerns.
“I’m both a minister and a mom, and I cannot imagine what this family is going through,” she told CBC.
However, she said any time a child is hurt or dies while receiving services from MCFD, there’s a “thorough” review.
Birth alert
Chambers is raising concerns about the practice commonly known as “birth alerts.”
Birth alerts historically happened when government protection workers with concerns about the safety of a child contacted a hospital before the child’s birth, Charlesworth explains.
If the hospital had concerns, the child could be taken away shortly after the birth.
However, the practice officially ended in B.C. in 2019.
Minister Lore said there are “ongoing elements” of birth alerts lingering in the judicial system, but declined to elaborate on that statement.
“What I can say is that every effort, and increasingly so over time, is made to support families in staying safely together,” Lore said.
Charlesworth there are still situations where children are vulnerable or families are not considered able to provide appropriate care for their child.
“There has been work done on trying to enhance the care that’s provided to the parents so that they can adequately care for the child,” Charlesworth said.
“For example, the child, if they are not safe or it’s deemed it’s not safe for them to stay with their biological parent, there could still be situations in which the parent has visitation several times during the day or has the opportunity to have supervised visits so that they can bond with the child.”
Chambers said she recognizes that birth alerts no longer exist, however, she is using that language to describe the situation because the safety plan was created so soon after the baby was born.
“The biggest concern is … stepping in and putting a safety plan in place with the child that’s two days old,” Chambers said. “That should be the last resort and any child protection concerns that are brought up should be substantiated before any action is taken.”
She says this is a systemic issue impacting, in particular, young, Indigenous mothers like Baker.
Contact checks
One month ago, Charlesworth called for a system-wide overhaul of the provincial child welfare system in her report Don’t Look Away. The report came three years after foster parents beat an 11-year-old boy in their care to death.
“There hadn’t been the prior contact checks, the criminal record checks, the home visit assessments and regular visits with the children, which are supposed to happen every 90 days,” Charlesworth said, adding that since that issue was flagged to the ministry a year ago, those checks are happening 98 per cent of the time according to independent evaluations.
That 90-day timeframe varies, she said, and in some cases, checks are made more frequently.
“The ministry has to use their discretion and maybe have more frequent visits depending on the stability of the situation or any concerns that they might have about the child’s well-being or fragility.”